Tasmanian-born Rachael Treasure is a best-selling author, regenerative agriculturalist, and mother. A graduate of universities in Orange and Bathurst, Rachael uses story to empower women and change mindsets towards healthier food systems.
As a young country woman in the 1990s, Rachael saw a profound disconnection emerging between the land and women as industrial agricultural systems began to erode environmental and human health. Rachael set her sights on becoming a rural journalist and writing a bestseller so she could showcase contemporary rural women, who were knew they had to defend and uplift their farming landscapes and food systems. Drawing on her experiences working as a jillaroo and a ringer on a Queensland cattle station, Rachael published her first novel ‘Jillaroo’, in 2002.
In the two decades since its release, Jillaroo has cemented itself as an iconic work of contemporary fiction, changing the face of Australian publishing by creating the rural women’s fiction genre and opening mindsets of readers to consider women as the necessary foundation for all healthy food systems.
Working as a rural journalist, Rachael saw a growing disconnection emerging between nature and people, and a decline in human and landscape health due to modern industrial agricultural practices. Rachael has continued to use storytelling in popular fiction form to awaken mass consciousness towards caring for our planet, particularly within agriculture.
She has partnered with Mother Nature on several properties to help ecological repair using holistic grazing management, land hydrology principles and feminine wisdom. Rachael has helped bring Natural Sequence Farming to Tasmania, and hosts Tarwyn Park Training’s Stuart Andrews annually to teach landscape repair to the wider community. Her “Little Big Farm” has sold meat, eggs and other produce directly to conscious consumers via Open Food Networks – an online system offering an alternative to major supermarkets.
Rachael has travelled widely, writing wherever she goes. She has worked a number of jobs as a jillaroo, professional wool classer, veterinary nurse, rural journalist, stock camp cook, high country cattle drover, truffle sniffer dog handler and family farm manager.
She now lives near Orielton, Tasmania, with her grown children and a collection of blissfully indulged animals, including an self-opinionated goat called Barbara Gordon. Her eighth novel ‘Milking Time’ has been longlisted for the Tasmanian Premier’s Literary fiction award, and is a story designed to spark a rural women’s rebellion.
Rachael’s daily work on the farm means she never has fancy nails and despite her international acclaim she remains ‘Tassie-as’.
Clink on this link to see the land restoration work Rachael has done using Natural Sequence Farming in collaboration with Tarwyn Park Training ;
